The Green Revolution has led to intensive, irrigated rice-wheat systems in the Indian subcontinent that has helped the nations reduce poverty and food insecurity. The limited turn-around time between rice harvest and sowing of the winter crop (wheat) and mechanized harvesting of rice pose a critical challenge for farmers to sustainably handle the surplus...

In this data base, representative georeferenced farmer survey data from Zambia from 2011 are combined with climate data to estimate storage losses, analyze their relationship with climate, and estimate the effect of climate change on storage losses. The storage loss data include importance of different pests (maize weevils and larger grain borer), and...

Development of a methodology for mechanical maize meter evaluation that compares diverse meters in terms of seed singulation, seed damage, and spatial distribution

In plant breeding research, several statistical machine learning methods have been developed and studied for assessing the genomic prediction (GP) accuracy of unobserved phenotypes. To increase the GP accuracy of unobserved phenotypes while simultaneously accounting for the complexity of genotype × environment interaction (GE), deep learning (DL) neural...

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT), in collaboration with the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) (previously the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute or KARI), conducted four nationally representative household surveys in the major maize growing areas during the last 30 years. All surveys used the...

Applying the difference-in-difference (DID) estimation procedure, this study quantifies the wheat blast (Magnaporthe oryzae pathotype Triticum) induced losses in wheat yield, quantity of wheat sold, consumed, or stored, as well as wheat grain value in Bangladesh in 2016 following a disease outbreak that affected over 15,000 hectares. Estimates show that...

This research examines maize SMEs in Mexico that participated in MasAgro, and their capacity to produce new maize hybrids and commercialize these hybrids in a competitive seed market. For this research, 22 companies located in different regions of Mexico were interviewed. The sample included different sizes of companies to obtain a greater variation in...

In the eastern Indian state of Bihar, most wheat farmers access seeds from the private dealers. In spite of the high seed replacement rate (>85%), the farmers still use the age-old varieties (mean age >20 years). Since most farmers consider seed dealers as a valuable source of information, a study was designed to examine the willingness of private...

e-Agrology is a system that leverages data generated in the agricultural production cycle to optimize resources and improve the decision-making process in the field. Furthermore, linking e-agrology terms with tools such as OLS, AGROVOC and RHoMIS would help increase the reach of this tool....

Gene-based marker data from international screening nurseries for marker-assisted selection.

New and improved maize hybrids, developed by the CIMMYT Global Maize Program, are available for uptake by public and private sector partners, especially those interested in marketing or disseminating hybrid maize seed across Southern Africa and similar agro-ecological zones. Following a rigorous trialing and a stage-gate advancement process culminating in...

Implications for Food Security

A standard quantitative genetic model was used to examine how genotype-environment interactions have changed over the past decades from four spring wheat trial data sets. The variability of cross interactions for yield from one year to another is explained in more than 70% by climatic factors.

Climate change and soil fertility decline are major threats to smallholder farmers' food and nutrition security in southern Africa, and cropping systems that improve soil health are needed to address these challenges. Cropping systems that invest in soil organic matter, such as no-tillage (NT) with crop residue retention, have been proposed as potential...

Conservation agriculture (CA)—the simultaneous application of minimum soil disturbance, crop residue retention, and crop diversification—is a key approach to address declining soil fertility and the adverse effects of climate change in southern Africa. Applying the three defining principles of CA alone, however, is often not enough, and complementary...

Grain yield data collected from Conservation Agriculture (CA) systems across experiments of varying experimental duration, established in trial locations of Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe under an increasingly variable climate. Data contains different agro-environmental yield response moderators such as type of crop diversifcation and amount of...

Weeds are responsible for major crop losses worldwide but can provide beneficial agroecosystem services. This study aimed to elucidate how arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in weeds respond to host identity and conservation agricultural practices. The study was carried out at two locations in Southern Africa during off-season and in-season maize...

Weed development is one of the major constraints to cereal cropping systems in Southern Africa with potential severe crop losses. Understanding weed community responses to different conservation agriculture (CA) components (i.e., no-tillage, NT; crop rotation, R; and mulching, M) and/or their combinations is crucial in Southern Africa where farmers apply...

Maize is increasingly being grown in the winter season in South Asia when there are low prevailing temperatures and frequent cold snaps. Therefore,.elite varieties must have cold resilience as an important trait. The current study identified a suite of genomic loci associated with grain yield along with agronomic traits such as flowering time and plant...

Dataset of total number of potential infections of wheat blast during the heading stage in Asia for the period 1981 though 2019 calculated using a generic infection model and hourly weather data from ERA5 reanalysis